1YO part 1 / Baby Barbarian

1YO part 1 — Baby Barbarian

Damn son, I was really gonna come in cause I wanted to put up an open challenge but I have to say that both sides really handled this poorly. It's okay to be blunt but be concious that not everyone is going to react the way you hope.

Personally, I wanna battle Futreblot if it means getting him to draw more and I'd rather he have the mileage so that he can get the the point we expect him to be at .

Another thing I gotta point out the aggression from some of our vets. Like I know I'm not the one to talk but after taking a break, it's surprising to see how rather than trying to deescalate the situation, some of ya'll that have been here for years really doubled-down.

I have more to say but I guess I dont wanna beat on a dead horse, people can DM me if they're interested in discussing this further. Futre, I hope you continue to make stuff on void.All you other guys, I hope you take some time to learn how to give proper crits and be patient with newcomers.

TL;DR: You should have canceled your 2-hour deadline and spent time to make this a comic at your actual skill level. You can also do better about taking critiques and comments without arguing against any that you don't like, and instead do what you said and just ignore the unhelpful stuff. The comic itself could have used some better pacing and some additional/changed panels to make the whole thing make more sense, and you could have just left off the last page. Also, please keep Baby Barbarian here; I missed him!

I think I'm mostly just confused about the purpose behind the whole process of making this comic. Why did you decide to make a comic in 2 hours? If it was an accident, why didn't you contact someone to fix the problem so you could take the time needed to make something more representative of your skills?

Why did you ask for critiques on what is essentially just thumbnails? I guess we can critique your page composition and scripting, but it's really not even worth critiquing an unfinished comic, because usually any critique given will come down to the fact that you didn't have enough time to finish it (I say this as someone who has submitted incomplete work and felt bad that the answer to every critique was just "I ran out of time").

I think you have the right attitude about listening to critiques and ignoring unhelpful ones. At the same time, it feels like you asked for critiques, then just got defensive when people gave you negative responses. Just ignore the stuff that doesn't help you, or else you'll end up looking like an asshole moreso than whoever might have given you a critique you feel is unhelpful or mean-spirited or whatever. For the record, I don't think anyone gave a response that wasn't fully merited, even if they weren't a critique but just a comment. Remember, not everyone is going to give a full critique, and that's totally fine. Just take what's helpful and ignore the rest. It's not worth your time to try to argue against people's crits, and sometimes it's just a matter of you not listening or not understanding rather than the other person actually giving a bad crit.

Critique on the comic itself: I think most of the advice I could give is stuff you could have fixed if you had just taken more time on this. So that's my main crit: don't rush your next comic. You don't have to rush any BB, and you don't have to accept any battles that you think you won't have time for.

Otherwise, I think your layouts are fine; there are always new ways you can push the boundaries and make your page composition more interesting, but I'm personally not great at that so I'd just advise you to pay attention to cool panel compositions in comics you read and try some of the techniques you like. I think pacing suffered a lot from quick jumps between beats without any sort of connection action. For example, between pages 4 and 5, it would read a lot better if there were a panel showing a closeup of Baby Barbarian's hand holding the amulet. It really looked like he didn't do anything and it just activated on its own the way you have it now. And page 3 broke the continuity at a bad spot, making it seem like the first two pages were supposed to be a gag, too, or something. It felt kinda like Robot Chicken where there are a lot of quick mini-stories/gags in rapid succession (often with pretty weak punch lines tbh). But the rest of the comic was serious, so having that one random page with a gag was really disorienting. I think it was that transition from serious to comedic then back to serious that kept that joke from landing, too. I didn't get that it was you telling readers to go back and read Baby Barbarian's archive if they wanted to know who was who until probably a page or two later, when I finally made sense of that seeming non-sequitur. I might just be dumb, though, so there's always that possibility haha. The last page really added nothing to the story; it involves details that have nothing to do with the rest of the comic's events, and that will probably just have to be re-explained in the next comic. I do like that drawing of B.B. on the last panel, though.

If I'm being completely honest, I'm not sure why I'm even critiquing this. It's barely a comic, and you know you can do better. I would much rather have saved my critique for a finished comic from you. And I love Baby Barbarian with all my heart, so I hope you do come back and give us something complete that I can then critique in a more productive setting.

I'm not leaving until I finish baby barbarian. with or without your critique. You can have your nice safe space of a community to belittle each other with your ideologies of complete tolerance. feel free to actually give me critique or stay away from the comments section. no need for you to expend the energy on me if I'm hurting anyones feelings with my "brutal honesty", like I have received, which is a tactic proven to be destructive if anyone cares to do their research.

A'ight. I'm not a popular nor a good artist. So maybe you'll listen to me.

You're adding to this whole "toxicity" you speak off. You keep coming back, wanting to prove a non-existent point about a relatively old comic.If you know you can do better. Try retelling this comic, or do a continuation of it.

Really dislike the idea of you leaving, but if it damages your mental health or self-esteem, I do encourage you taking a break from it. And if you feel like it, you can always come back and prove all of us wrong with a new and improved comic.

@jaykat, if that makes you lose respect in me I've got none for you. everyone here fosters an environment where people can just be rude cause they're popular. I just want to get my comic done without reading that someone thinks my skill is just to low for them to even consider I had put any effort in.

@Dechado, they put the energy into belittling me not giving me feedback. feedback means they are offering me something. Heathen just said that I wasn't putting effort in. which is not a comment on the art, it's a comment on me. which isn't critique. Skulls did a good critique. more than I had asked for, and I appreciated it.

This wasn't a minor misunderstanding. I left because people were rude and elitist. It's really toxic.

The energy you're using to belittle people that put some time into giving feedback, it might be wiser trying to spend it doing small studies of anatomy, perspective, and the like. Skulls pretty much gave you a "What to work on" list. Build from that, and do better next time.

If you get the error of a deadline in two hours, don't be afraid to contact staff.And a tip from someone that always struggles with deadlines: Beyond Battles don't really have a timer. Work on them on your free time, and upload when you feel ready.

Like I stated before. I really like Baby Barbarian, and would hate that you left because minor misunderstandings in the comment section.

At this point, you're completely disrespecting the people who've given nothing but honest feedback, despite you asking for their thoughts on it, and instead of taking them to heart for the next time you do a comic, you choose to attack them back the way you did.

cracking skulls, I appreciate your critique. I don't think defending jerks is a great thing to do but I'm not your boss.

If people didn't like it and have nothing good to say, especially those who have a clear talent and thus come across as elitist when they dismiss other, they could just not comment. It would help avoid loosing more people in the community. Toxicity just sucks.

regardless, thanks for the comments. I appreciate the time and effort your put into this, I can't expect anyone to give me a critique, but I appreciate it when people do.

Also as someone who identifies with my pre-christian heathen ancestry, the fact heathen (using that name) didn't make a quality argument is very non heathen. We were welcoming, social people before conversion. We didn't sugar coat things and we weren't without problems, but we didn't disrespect people without good cause.

You have something of an interesting plot going on for this comic from what I was able to gather from your 2 hour effort. There could be a potential NPC introduced to further the plot and purpose of your character.

Unfortunately, your 2 hour effort resulted in a submission that is just too messy for -anyone- to understand on a grander scale, and gives off the impression that you truly didn't care. But since you say you did care, I'll give you the following as to why this comic fails on execution:

Your main problem for this comic is the lack of control of line width and further detailing in your inks. Far too simple shapes and lack of detailing in your buildings, for example, read much less of a city and much more and wooden blocks with no real convincing of any chaotic event happening in your scene set up. This results in your plot being extremely underwhelming of any reveal, threat, or otherwise change in the city you created.

Your character anatomy suffers greatly in your lack of control of detailing or line width. Character scaling relative to their environment is everywhere, resulting in the loss of any sliver of characters coming to life. As this comic was supposed to introduce us to someone new, any impact they needed to make is loss, and you lose the opportunity to reel your readers into your characters new arc.

Lastly, Your layouts are almost non existent in this comic. There is paneling and that always helps with pacing, but with numerous close up shots, speech bubbles that take up too much space, or splash pages that are -too- empty, I'm left with more questions of what exactly is going on in the BB, rather than any basic understanding of what this means for your character in the future.

How to resolve:Aside from the point I made obvious of "more control of your pen", basic life studies of your surroundings can help you improve on bringing them to life in your comics. Still life, life drawings, going to parks or museums to practice and sketch will help you tremendously if you put more than 3-4 hours a day into it. Proper understanding of your own quality of work will also help with any future negative reception you'll receive. If you understand that this quality of work within the time frame given to you isn't your best, the scores and comments will reflect upon it. Sketching this out in two hours, then coming back to it later for more refinement is the best solution for avoiding any unfavorable feedback in the future.

apparently I'm not being reasonable because I could have asked for more time. that's not the point. I did it in the time I was given. some people are just being rude, and the moderation team is backing them up.

Just cause they can draw doesn't mean they can critique. period. can't take my critique, don't comment.

actually sabulive, it gave me two hours when I started it. so, you are incorrect.

@angie, yeah, sorry. I did resize them, just uploaded the wrong pages. that's mentioned even further down.

@cracking skulls. constructive. you can be to the point, I'm not mad at certain people for being to the point. I'm pretty irritated cause they act like they are being so knowledgable when they are just not. I think you can see my responses to people who are giving decent critique. I'm not kidding anyone that this is a great submission. I had 2 hours, I uploaded the wrong size of drawings. and I was making a statement to the general public here about some issues I had through my artwork. just don't tell me I did nothing cause that's just rude.

@astro sean, when I started the BB it gave me 2 hours. so yeah I had very little time. this was a very spur of the moment thing. thanks for not being an ass about it. I appreciate your comment.

Not trying to be an asshole here, but this looks like you spent minimal time on this comic. These look more like sketches for thumbnails than a finished product. I had to read these pages on my phone without clicking them, because it was impossible to make any sense of it at the size they are currently. You have a fun character, and potential to become a stronger artist, but you have to actually put time in constructing your comics.

I know you already commented on the page size, but the page size you actually draw at doesn't influence what the final size will be. I draw everything at 600-1200 dpi 11X17 in Manga Studio and always shrink pages down to about 600-800 pixels wide. This allows the viewer to take in your whole page as you intended and be able to easily read the comic. Having to spend 5-10 seconds zooming out on your pages breaks any sort of flow you wanted to have.

There is no effort here. You mention page layout, dialogue etc, but I see no effort in that either. As this is a BB, you have the luxury of time to give it your all (or at least more than what you've given here); it is absolutely unfair for you to submit something with low effort and ask for critique for it, then when you receive critique that points that out, you chuck a tantie and claim they are on their high horse. It really does nothing but alienate you from fellow community members who, at the end of the day, are here to support you and help you improve.

You get what you put in. I feel you can defo do better than what you've shown here, and I would like for you to stick around to prove that.

@ heathen. "total lack of effort" would include not thinking of page layout, dialogue, pacing, you know the parts of a comic that differentiate it from a painting. but thanks I guess? maybe I just could hear your true intent from that high horse. ;P

@jaykat, I definitely forgot to set a smaller stage for the close up action. thank you. the third page is just a message to frustrating people who are part of the reason I haven't been here for a year. it's super passive aggressive but at this point I don't really care, I'm going to finish baby barbarian and just ignore the half harted or ill directed 'critique' some people give.

@William_Duel understandable, I actually do have resized pages and I always draw at full size because drawing at 100px width doesn't result in the same quality of line for raster art. thanks though.

Pyras Terran, I don’t want to lose the comments at this point, is there some way to avoid that?

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I don't think it's a simple matter of just replacing the pages as I'm sure you've gotten votes already that may have been influenced by the page size. You could always just submit another BB entry with the correctly resized pages but I dunno how worthwhile that is unless you wanna spruce this up before taking another shot at it? Admittedly I'm skipping over it because I just can't deal. But for future reference, keep either width at 1000 pixels for average portrait pages or height at 1000 for a landscape image.

Glad to see you doing comics again. But I'd have to second all the other comments before on the page size, story and overall quality.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it, I honestly had no idea what was even going on storywise. The third page I feel was unnecessary as it didn't really add anything to it nor did it feel like it had any connection to what was happening. The art also could have had more love given to it. It's too scribbly and untidy, and I'm not keen on the panel arrangement here. Nothing flows along as smoothly as they should.

Hi everyone. Thanks for the critique Astrodile. I definitely farted this out as a way to get myself back in the game so I was more concerned with pacing and flow which I don’t think was great anyways. There’s a lot of reasons for page 3 and I appreciate your input.

Pyras Terran, I don’t want to lose the comments at this point, is there some way to avoid that?

Welcome back yo! Nice to see a comic for Baby Barbarian again, hope to see what else you'll whip up in the future!

As far as my critique goes, there's pretty notable dips in quality with each page, and in my honest opinion they all look like sketches. Especially concerning the final page, which looks like the apple pen lost its sensitivity? But I'd say that page generally would be my favorite, because unlike the others the inconsistency with line weight isn't an additional issue here.While I understand that this is a prelude to a character arc(?) for Baby Barbarian, the third page being a comedic incentive to any new readers or those who've become unfamiliar with the characters history to read the archives-- It was a miss for me, I didn't really gain a chuckle from it. And it even takes away from the what's going on in the comic itself, as it's hard to return to the imposed depth of this comic when it's telling you all the same to check out the archives too.

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